Fiorenza Cossotto – a biography

Fiorenza Cossotto was born in Crescentino in Piedmont, Italy, on 22 April 1935. She is one of the greatest mezzo-sopranos of the 20th century.

Cossotto attended the Turin Academy of Music with Mercedes Llopart, and made her opera début as Sister Matilde in the world première of Poulenc’s Dialogues des carmélites in 1957 at La Scala in Milan. She made her international début was at the 1958 Wexford Festival as Giovanna Seymour in Donizetti’s Anna Bolena, followed by her Covent Garden début in 1959 as Neris in Cherubini’s Médée, with Maria Callas in the title role.

A 1962 performance of the lead in La favorita at La Scala, replacing an indisposed Giulietta Simionato, led to wider fame. She was Azucena in Il trovatore to open La Scala’s 1962-3 season with Franco Corelli, Ettore Bastianini and Antonietta Stella, with Gianandrea Gavazzeni conducting and Luchino Visconti directing. In the same season in Milan she sang in Verdi’s Requiem with Carlo Bergonzi, Leontyne Price and Nicolai Ghiaurov conducted by Herbert von Karajan which was then taken to the Bolshoi in Moscow.

In 1964 she made her American début as Leonora in La favorita at the Lyric Opera of Chicago and she sang at the Metropolitan Opera for the first time in 1968 in Aida. Between this and her last Met performance during the 1988–89 season, she gave 148 performances at the theatre.

Cossotto sang some of the heaviest roles ever written for a mezzo-soprano, in all the major houses in the world, singing Favorita, Amneris, Azucena, Eboli, Preziosilla, Maddalena, Ulrica, and Laura. She also played Carmen, Mozart’s Cherubino, Urbain in Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots, Bellini’s Romeo and Marfa in Mussorgsky’s Khovanshchina.

Of all the great singers with whom she shared the stage or recording studio, it is her relationship with Maria Callas that stirs the most interest, having sung Teresa to Callas’ Amina in La sonnambula at La Scala, in Gluck’s Ifigenia in Tauride, and many other occasions, including Callas’ last Norma in Paris.

In 2005 she celebrated her 70th birthday with a performance of Suor Angelica at the Théâtre Royal in Liège, Belgium, and in 2012, at 77, she gave a concert at the Turin Conservatoire where she was presented with an Award for her career from the Piedmont region and the city of Turin.

Graham Spicer

Writer, director and photographer in Milan, blogging (under the name 'Gramilano') about dance, opera, music and photography for people who are a bit like me and like some of the things I like.

I was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy. My scribblings have appeared in various publications from Woman's Weekly to Gay Times. I write the 'Danza in Italia' column for Dancing Times.